Free Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan Page B

was in the same Methodist Youth Fellowship group as Astrid, picked up a copy
     of
Point de Vue
at Charles de Gaulle Airport and came upon a paparazzi photograph of Astrid doing
     cannonballs off a yacht in Porto Ercole with some young European princes. Astrid returned
     from school holidays that year with a precociously sophisticated sense of style. While
     other girls in her set became mad for head-to-toe designer brands, Astrid was the
     first to pair a vintage Saint Laurent
Le Smoking
jacket with three-dollar batik shorts bought off a beach vendor in Bali, the first
     to wear the Antwerp Six, and the first to bring home a pair of red-heeled stilettos
     from some Parisian shoemaker named Christian. Her classmates at Methodist Girls’ School
     strove to imitate her every look, while their brothers nicknamed Astrid “the Goddess”
     and anointed her the chief object of their masturbatory fantasies.
    After famously and unabashedly flunking every one of her A levels
(how could that girl concentrate on her studies when she was jet-setting all the time?)
, Astrid was shipped off to a preparatory college in London for revision courses.
     Everyone knew the story of how eighteen-year-old Charlie Wu—the eldest son of the
     tech billionaire Wu Hao Lian—bade a tearful goodbye to her at Changi Airport and promptly
     chartered his own jet, ordering the pilot to race her plane to Heathrow. When Astrid
     arrived, she was astonished to find a besotted Charlie awaiting her at the arrival
     gate with three hundred red roses. They were inseparable for the next few years, and
     Charlie’s parents purchased a flat for him in Knightsbridge (for the sake of appearances),even though the cognoscenti suspected Charlie and Astrid were probably “living in
     sin” at her private quarters in the Calthorpe Hotel.
    At age twenty-two, Charlie proposed on a ski lift in Verbier, and though Astrid accepted,
     she supposedly refused the thirty-nine-carat diamond solitaire he presented as far
     too vulgar, flinging it onto the slopes (Charlie did not even attempt to search for
     the ring). Social Singapore was atwitter over the impending nuptials, while her parents
     were aghast at the prospect of becoming connected to a family of no particular lineage
     and such shameless new money. But it all came to a shocking end nine days before the
     most lavish wedding Asia had ever seen when Astrid and Charlie were sighted having
     a screaming match in broad daylight. Astrid, it was famously said, “chucked him like
     she chucked that diamond outside Wendy’s on Orchard Road, throwing a Frosty in his
     face,” and took off for Paris the next day.
    Her parents supported the idea of Astrid having a “cooling-off period” away, but try
     as she might to maintain a low profile, Astrid effortlessly enchanted
le tout Paris
with her smoldering beauty. Back in Singapore, the wagging tongues resumed: Astrid
     was making a spectacle of herself. She was supposedly spotted in the front row at
     the Valentino show, seated between Joan Collins and Princess Rosario of Bulgaria.
     She was said to be having long, intimate lunches at Le Voltaire with a married philosopher
     playboy. And perhaps most sensational, rumor had it that she had become involved with
     one of the sons of the Aga Khan and was preparing to convert to Islam so that they
     could marry. (The Bishop of Singapore was said to have flown to Paris on a moment’s
     notice to intervene.)
    All these rumors came to naught when Astrid surprised everyone again by announcing
     her engagement to Michael Teo. The first question on everyone’s lips was “Michael
who
?” He was a complete unknown, the son of schoolteachers from the then middle-class
     neighborhood of Toa Payoh. At first her parents were aghast and mystified by how she
     could have come into contact with someone from “that kind of background,” but in the
     end they realized that Astrid had made something of a catch—she had chosen a fiercely